THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

FYI, the charts contain all batted balls, including home runs.

Interesting web site.  First time I heard of it.

Good ideas.
The newer versions of the charts break down 2B/3B and HR for each ‘Air’ zone.

A simple batting average can be useful if you are interested in assessing the ‘on-base’ component of certain types of batted balls. I like knowing how often certain actions simply result in outs *in addition* to the weighted value of those batted balls overall. Maybe I’m in the minority, however.

This is certainly a work-in-progress, so I’m happy to hear more ideas about this work and consider other opinions as I continue to tweak this stuff…

Chris, I certainly support the batting average, if it’s used in conjunction (as a secondary metric) with the primary metric.  For example, I like to use wOBA and OBP, where wOBA is a weighted version of OBP.  When the two numbers match, then I know that a straight OBP tells me what I want.  When wOBA is higher than OBP, then I know that I’m getting more XBH, and fewer walks.

In your case, showing AVG and wAVG would be good, and will satisfy all.

I actually disagree with Tom here. IMO, the simpler the better. I have no problem with using weighted batting average instead of normal batting average, but I’d rather have one number rather than a bunch, just to avoid “over-clutter.”

I don’t think we have disagreement.  At the very least, present the weighted average.  If it doesn’t clutter the presentation (or if Chris likes it), also present the unweighted average.

Well, clutter is why I didn’t include a linear weights estimate in the first place. But it’s probably workable.

In presenting one number, I don’t think it’s so clear cut. The tension is between making something useful and something usable. ‘Batting average’ is more usable for a greater number of fans because it’s something everyone understands. A weighted average is more useful because it conveys, well, better information. 
I’ll work out some solution before my next update next week. And later this month I’ll also include tables with more detailed information for each zone to supplment the charts. So everything anyone needs will be there in one form or another.

If you are going to also have tables, and if that is going to have the weighted average, then it almost doesn’t matter what you display in the graph.

Another thing to consider is the HR.  From one perspective, you need to have it, since you want to know the distribution of balls hit in certain directions and distances.

But, in other respects, you don’t want it, if you are trying to see how well the batter “beat” the fielder.

Again, if you are going to do things in tabular form, this is something else for you to consider.

Great job!

Well, home runs could be shown outside of the field.

I actually put HR outside of the park in early versions of this project but, as tango said earlier, that’s good for some purposes but makes the charts difficult to use for other purposes.
I think the tables will be most valuable and have all that’s needed for various uses of this data - the charts will just serve as a quick reference to get a general understanding of tendencies.

Chris, where are you getting the data from?